Page 36 of Shattered Hearts

Everything appealing about getting naked with someone and acting like an animal flatlined for me years ago. I’m a big enough monster as it is. I don’t need to become the kind that gets his wife killed and then turns around and gets off with other women.

I hate thinking about sex. But apparently my mental resolve and my body’s desires aren’t the same anymore. Technically, I am…deprived.Years of celibacy will do that to a man. Touch feeds me the most in my relationships with women, and in the absence of both, my body has gone hungry, starving for years.

I’ve been thrown together with a woman for the first time in three years. And now I keep searching for excuses to touch her.

Just holding her while we danced made me hard. And when she fell half naked into my lap? I came unglued.

Riley single-handedly resurrected my libido.

I suck in a breath when her lavendar scent floats over and up my nose. She’s running a brush through her long blond waves.

Resisting the urge to watch her like some sort of creeper, I focus on the road and switch lanes as we wind through the streets back toward her side of town.

In my periphery, she puts her hair in a ponytail.

Riley’s pushed herself so far away from me in the passenger seat, that if someone opened her door from the outside, she’d fall out onto the pavement. That’s how little she wants to be near me.

I want her to stop moving around. When she’s still, I can almost convince myself she’s not here. But the joke’s on me because she soon starts removing her makeup and reapplying it.

Her adaptability fascinates me.

Question after question pops to mind and dies there, never to be spoken.

Have you done this before? Have you filled in for Harper any other times? Why’d you leave the Gallaghers? Why did you agree to be my fake wife? Why do you work at a shelter?

Riley points to a squat one-story building, pressed up tight to the curb.

“Over there is fine.” Those are the only words she’s spoken to me since our little chat in the hallway earlier.

Part of me is impressed. Yesterday, I made her cry. Today, I’ve pissed her off to the point of her giving me the silent treatment. Twice.

I dip out of the lane into a loading zone space so she can hop out.

“What about?—”

“Text me. We’ll figure out a schedule.” Riley, already out of the car and closing the door, throws the words over her shoulder.

It’s my fault. I deserve her chilly treatment and much worse, but still...annoyance jimmies at my spine.

Riley breaks my focus, jogging straight through my sight line toward the women’s shelter.

Through the car’s tinted windows, I glimpse her interaction with the colleague who opens the door. Even from this distance,I can tell she’s a completely different person around people she’s comfortable with.

And the fact that I’m even one percent interested in who she smiles at—a woman who’s not my intended, a woman who will vanish from my life as soon as her sister returns—is a very serious problem.

From now on, I’m going to keep my guard up around Riley Brennan, the woman who saves all her frowns and silence for me.

It’s the only way to keep us both safe. This morning, I didn’t want us to be enemies, but I was wrong. This way is far better. Enemies know to be wary of each other.

Besides, a cordial relationship between us isn’t possible.

Not when she makes my cock this hungry.

Chapter 10

Riley

In reality, only four days have passed since I began my role as a decoy bride. In Riley Time, however, the Tuesday following the wedding marks at least one whole month of suffering.